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Calcium

Calcium is a mineral everyone is aware of. While the dairy industry has claimed it as their own – or they’ve proclaimed themselves as its top source – calcium, like all other minerals, comes from the soil. This means, we can get calcium through plants just like any other mineral.

Plant-based doctors often say we should skip the middle animal (cows) and get our calcium straight from greens just like they do. This is true, if we eat our dark leafy greens every day, we can get all the calcium we need. Except for spinach, beet greens, and chard which are high in oxalates that bind to calcium. Other great sources include white beans, soybeans, chia seeds, sesame seeds, and almonds!

While most of us know that calcium is crucial for our bones, it’s also important for our heart, our muscles, our neurotransmitters, and our blood.

Calcium Absorption and Intake Recommendations

Worried about not reaching the U.S. intake recommendations with plant-based sources? Here’s something we all need to understand. These recommendations are based on dairy absorption rates. We only absorb from 30 to 35% of calcium from dairy. If we ingest 1300 mg of calcium (U.S. Daily Value), we are only absorbing about 390 mg. If we instead get our calcium from low-oxalate dark leafy greens, we’ll absorb 50-60%. So, to reach the same 390 mg, we only need to ingest 750 mg of calcium.

Most people need less calcium based not on the general Daily Value but on their Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) that is more specific to their sex and age. This is probably why trusted plant-based sites like NutritionFacts.org or the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recommend a daily calcium intake of at least 600 mg. Now, that’s a lot easier to reach through a balanced, whole-foods, plant-based diet!

On this page, we’ll share the best foods to help you reach your intake needs, a nutrition calculator to help you identify your RDA as well as your family’s, further details on what calcium can do for us, some important facts, and a comparison between whole-food, plant-based sources, supplements, and animal-based sources. Enjoy!

Top Whole-Food, Plant-Based Sources

Hover over each food below to see how much calcium you can get with one serving. Click on each food’s picture to visit its interactive page with a personalized calculator of all the nutrition you can get from one serving, more information about how it supports our body, tips to choose and prepare it, interesting facts, and more!

Collard Greens
1 cup cooked = 268 mg
Link

Soybeans
Mature 1 c cooked = 175 mg / Edamame 1 c cooked = 98 mg
Link

Calcium Personalized Calculator

See how much calcium you and your family members need, according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025. As a reminder, plant-based sites NutritionFacts.org and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recommend a daily calcium intake of at least 600 mg a day from dark leafy greens due to the higher amount of calcium we can absorb from this source, compared to only 30-35% of calcium from dairy.

Terminology:

Daily Value (DV): The recommended amount of nutrients to consume each day for individuals who are 4 years old or older.
Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA): The recommended amount of nutrients to consume each day according to the individual’s age, gender, and whether a woman is pregnant or breastfeeding.
Upper Intake Level (UL): The highest amount of nutrient intake that will not pose adverse health effects on most individuals.

How Our Body Uses Calcium

99% of the calcium in our body is stored in our bones and teeth, but other parts of our body also need this nutrient for proper functioning. Hover over each pointer below for more details on how our body uses calcium. Click on the pointer to visit the specific body part’s interactive page to discover what other nutrients support it, the best sources to find them, and other interesting facts.

Important Things to Know

Hover over each of the interesting facts below to flip the tiles and learn more details.

Check out the interesting facts below! Tap on the red triangles to flip the tiles and learn more details.

We need vitamin D to absorb calcium.

Our bodies can’t absorb calcium without vitamin D. It also helps our kidneys break calcium down, so it doesn’t get eliminated in our urine.

We need essential amino acid Lysine to absorb calcium.

Essential amino acid, lysine, is important for calcium absorption. Whole-foods, plant-based sources of lysine include legumes like lentils and common beans, nuts like peanuts and almonds, and seeds like chia seeds, hemp seeds, and pumpkin seeds. Check out our protein page!

Vitamin C enhances calcium absorption.

Vitamin C enhances intestinal calcium absorption, which is why orange juice is often fortified with calcium. In fact, a study found that a higher vitamin C intake was associated with a lower risk of osteoporosis in adults over 50 with low physical activity levels.

We need vitamin K to break down calcium.

Vitamin K helps us break down calcium for our body to use and for its allocation in our bones and teeth.

Foods rich in oxalates are not a source of calcium.

Foods rich in oxalates like spinach, chard, and beet greens are not good sources of calcium, even if they are high in this nutrient. This is because the oxalates bind to the calcium and keep us from absorbing about 95% of it!

Phytates bind to calcium, cooking helps.

Phytates in legumes, grains, nuts and seeds bind to calcium, which is why we only absorb from 21 to 27% of the calcium content.

Fortunately, soaking our beans overnight or cooking them for 40 minutes in a pressure cooker or for an hour on the stove will reduce phytates significantly, enhancing calcium absorption. Cooking our grains and roasting our nuts also helps reduce phytates.

Then again, we still need to ingest some phytates to get our phosphorus intake, so strive for balance when planning your meals, especially if you are 100% whole-foods, plant-based.

Calcium helps reduce lead absorption.

As much as we try to keep our children and ourselves safe from lead pollution, sometimes it’s hard to identify potential sources. While this may not fully protect us from lead poisoning, calcium, vitamin C and iron help reduce lead absorption.

Our bones supply calcium to other parts of our body when needed.

When there’s a calcium deficiency, our body takes calcium from these stores to allow for other body functions or to provide calcium to our developing babies during pregnancy and lactation.

Calcium deficiency signs typically don’t show until we grow old.

Unless we have an extreme calcium deficiency, we may not know we are deficient until we grow old and our bones become porous (osteoporosis).

Extreme deficiency manifests itself through tingling in the fingers, muscle cramps, convulsions, lethargy, poor appetite, and abnormal heart rhythms. Untreated, it can result in death.